7 Startup And Tech Experts Share The Best Advice They’ve Ever Received

From creating a successful business to treating computers like idiots, Lama users share the best career advice they’ve ever received.

LAMA’s ask-me-anything app is home to a diverse community of future-focused professionals, including startup founders, tech experts and media entrepreneurs. We decided to tap into their collective experience to find out the advice that helped them get to where they are today.

“The best advice I ever received was to not be afraid of not being fully fluent in whatever it is I’m doing — whether that’s a programming language or some other skill I might have as a beginner.

“Having that pressure to learn something new, understand how it works and put it into some of my work has helped me grow a lot. Job-wise, the most useful tip is to always be open to new experiences — learning new things and accepting jobs, even if I don’t know everything fully.

“The most useful thing is Doing It. Whatever you want to achieve, start right now at this minute and do something. Maybe it’s just a very small thing for your final goal, but you need to start now and do something.”

Israel Oba is the founder of JELI, a marketing agency in Manchester which specializes in Snapchat. He still takes inspiration from a great piece of advice he received in a previous career:

“When I was working as an actor, someone told me that before I go into any audition, I should always prepare myself to make one bold choice, because if you don’t take that risk and make a bold choice in an audition you’ll never stand out.”

Some of LAMA’s users tend to keep their answers short and sweet. In most cases, they have valuable things to say, nonetheless. Take strategy and e-commerce consultant, Alexandra Zanders for example. She says:

“Don’t do things because of money, do them because you’re passionate about it.”

Jillian Beytin is the founder of BearRadio, Berlin’s English language podcasting network. She believes busy professionals should make a greater effort to set aside time for self-care:

“I think a lot of people my age who work a lot, and have gone to school a lot, and are always busy, don’t take time for themselves, and I think that can lead to burnouts or other unnecessary anxieties or stress.

“Taking a day for yourself once a month even can go a long way towards recharging you and making sure you’re ready for all the trials and tribulations that go along with being a really busy person.”

“When I was starting my business I had difficulties getting funds, so I was worried and didn’t know how to start. One of my best friends told me I should start buying; even if it’s just small pieces of product, I should buy that with the small amount I have. With that little amount I had back then, I started buying small products and selling.”

Thanks to his friend’s advice, Padmong Jung is now able to buy and sell on a larger scale.

We’ll end now with what is quite possibly our favorite response, in which Arnold Spyros tells us how we should approach computers:

“The best advice I ever received was to treat computer machines like total idiots. It helps with everything, especially in programming, because you’re just imagining that you have someone that doesn’t know anything, and literally, that’s what the computer is — a total idiot who doesn’t know anything.

“It’s just a machine with electricity that computes stuff, and it doesn’t even know what to compute; you have to tell the computer what to compute and how to do it. The only advantage they have is that they do it really fast. Because of this we often think they’re smart machines, and we say smart watch, smart house, smart anything, but it’s actually not smart. It’s people that program these things.

“When you realize that and treat computer machines like total idiots, you can program, design, do pretty much anything with ease.”